


God Called In Sick Today

by rabidbinbadger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Demon Dean Winchester, First Blade, Gen, Mark of Cain, Post-Episode: s09e23 Do You Believe In Miracles?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1778962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidbinbadger/pseuds/rabidbinbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The other hand, the one that holds the Blade, itches in that old, familiar way. An itch, deep in dead bones where it can't be scratched. A torment carried jaggedly along phantom nerves, begging to be drowned, however temporarily, by the relief of slaughter, gore and blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God Called In Sick Today

His eyes open and he sees nothing. Feels nothing. Is nothing. He’s not there anymore, not really. Not yet. Might never be again. For now he is merely a conduit, a vessel for a darker power. One that burns and screams through his veins, howling in gleeful release.

_It_ takes stock of his body. _It's_ body now, a host and nothing more. Where once _it_ was a grudgingly accepted parasite, a means to an end that he thought he could use, now _it_ has control. _It_ no longer needs to be quick and cautious. No longer needs to carefully avoid situations that might check the tidal waves of hated and anger that _it_ draws up and harnesses as they flow through him to wrest temporary control. Now _it_ can afford to take _its_ time. Luxuriate.

_It_ holds the host’s hand up, examines the tanned skin and sinew. Such a curious thing, the human body. A thousand, thousand tiny, fragile components all reliant on each other. Not this one, though, not any more. Now this body is a shell, almost invulnerable and animated not by interconnecting constituent parts, but by one seething, writhing force. _It_ doesn’t move the arms or legs or eyes, _it_ vivifies them, floods them with brutish vital force and bends them to _its_ will. 

The other hand, the one that holds the Blade, itches in that old, familiar way. An itch, deep in dead bones where it can't be scratched. A torment carried jaggedly along phantom nerves, begging to be drowned, however temporarily, by the relief of slaughter, gore and blood. _It_ remembers the itch, despises it. The gaps between are only bearable when they’re working up to massacre. Like the junkie with the needle, there is the ritual. A ritual that begins with the careful selection of the victim and builds up, through the hunt, to the butchery and the desecration. _It_ doesn’t live just for ceaseless, thoughtless carnage. _It_ lives for the whole process.

A demon stands by the bed, wittering on. _It_ recognises him from the host’s memories. Crowley, a grasper, ambitious. Nothing particularly special, and yet he still thinks to bind _it_. He may style himself the King of Hell but like so many before him he’s ephemeral, transient. _It_ cares not for his machinations, has no interest in hell, in the ruling of demons or in the orchestration of grand schemes. _It_ exists purely for the hunt and the slaughter. 

There’s no hunt to be had here, but there is at least a kind of slaughter. _It_ stands, Blade clasped tightly by _its_ side, unable to let go. _Its_ hold on the host body is only maintained by the energy that’s cycling through the flesh, back and forth from the Mark to the Blade. The body is dead, still, and if _it_ lets go before the flesh is revived this unnatural animation will sputter out.

_It_ had this problem before, knows how to fix it. But there’s a risk. To revive the body would be to reattach the soul, to welcome him back properly into his own flesh and give him the chance to do what the first host did- throw down the Blade, rid himself of the Mark. _It's_ spent a while living in this host’s head. _It_ thinks he’s stronger than the previous one in some ways, but weaker in others. Crippled by self-disgust and doubt, but full of the same kind of love that allowed the first to put down the Blade and retreat to the wilderness.

_It_ kills Crowley quickly, Blade slashing across his throat, choking off his serpentine whisperings. The Queen and King of hell are both dead now, and the pit will be as it was. Chaos and malice and pain without order or control.

_It_ takes a moment to plot _its_ next course of action. The angel and the brother have to be killed, obliterated so thoroughly that the host doesn’t even have graves to mourn at. This host has a habit of breaking through possessions for the ones he loves. _It_ can see his history, paw through his memories. The deed needs to be done before the body is revived, while his soul is still drifting aimlessly around the flesh, present but not connected. That has its own risk though. One slip, one instant of separation from the Blade and _it_ will be resigned, dormant, to a corpse until someone reconnects the circuit once more.

_It_ kicks Crowley’s body under the bed, just in case, and straps the Blade firmly to the host’s leg. _It_ makes for Sam’s room, finds _itself_ stuck at the door, looks down and curses. A devil’s trap has been scrawled on the floor, Sam’s insurance against Crowley.

_It_ hisses. _It_ had become so used to the host’s human body that _it_ hadn’t accounted for this. It makes things harder, but not irreparably so. _It_ concentrates, peels the black sheen off the host’s eyes, shouts out Sam’s name and then crumples to the floor.

“Dean?” 

Fear, trepidation, a sliver of hope. _It_ can work with those. What _it_ can’t work with is the faintest flicker of the host’s soul stirring deep within loose, redundant flesh. _It_ tamps him down, wraps him up and smothers him in power pulled from the Blade. 

“I-I can’t get out.”

“What happened, Dean?”

“Crowley, the Blade, I don’t know. I- I just woke up, tried to find you, and-”

“And now you’re stuck in a devil’s trap.”

“Yeah…”

While they’re talking _it_ plunders the host’s memories, learning the way he talks, the way he responds to Sam.

“So, what, you’re a demon now?”

“Maybe. I don’t goddamn know, Sam.”

“Well, do you feel, I don’t know, different?”

“Uh, a little? Angrier maybe. Nothing the Mark wasn’t doing anyway.”

“This, this might be a good thing.”

“Yeah, Sam. I’m a demon. King douchebag out of all the evil things we hunt and kill. Show me the silver frickin’ lining.”

“Dean, we can cure demons. This might be the way we get you back to, well, you again.”

“Y’think?”

“It’s worth a chance.”

“Not you.”

“What?”

“Last time you cured a demon it nearly killed you. You finish the last trial, who knows that could happen.”

“Who then?”

“I don’t know, okay. But we’ll work it out. Now can you let me outta this goddamn trap?”

“Uh…”

“What, don’t trust me, Sammy?”

“Well you are stuck in a devil’s trap.”

“Okay, okay. Well, this isn’t holy ground, so you’re gonna have to let me out some time.”

“I’ll get the cuffs we used on Crowley. Stay put.”

“I’m not even dignifying that with a sarcastic remark.”

_It_ sits cross-legged on the floor, considering. _It_ needs out of this trap, but _it_ doesn’t want to trade one form of imprisonment for another. _It_ probably wouldn’t be able to break those cuffs, and that’d make the next step a lot more complicated.

Sam returns and _it_ can read the hesitance in his body. His hunched over shoulders and the set of his jaw. He doesn’t want to do this, but if he sees the slightest hint that this isn’t his brother sitting before him he won’t balk. _It_ stands and offers up the host’s wrists. Sam sighs, hesitates, steps into the trap.

He realises his mistake almost instantly. Unfortunately, as usual, almost isn’t enough. _It_ grabs Sam’s hands, wrenches his wrists back with demonic strength until they snap, white bone poking obscenely up through tanned skin and fresh blood. 

“Dean?” Sam chokes out.

_It_ doesn’t bother to answer. _It_ just grabs Sam’s right shoulder with one hand, lashes out with the other, driving an outstretched, clawed hand against his ribs as if to break through and tear out his heart. _It_ pulls with one hand and gouges with the other, succeeds in cracking a rib, two, pushes into pulpy flesh, grabs a fistful and pulls back, laughing. _It_ hasn’t laughed like this for a long time. _It'd_ remembered the desperate, needy satisfaction of the hunt and slaughter. _It_ hadn’t remembered the glee. _It_ wants to mark this moment, gather up the blood and preserve it, find a way to tattoo it into the host’s flesh so that it’d stay there forever. A warning.

Sam moans, still just about alive. _It_ smiles, let’s the host’s eyes slick over black again. _It_ doesn’t want to draw this out, enjoyable as it might be. There’ll be time for play when _it's_ safe, when the host’s primary ties to this world are broken for good. _It_ licks Sam’s blood of the host’s fingers, delicately, savouring the taste, and then puts him out of his misery before dropping his body to the floor with a dull thunk. The blood that wells up from Sam’s wounds masses in and around the devil’s trap, breaking its power.

_It_ doesn’t step out of the trap immediately. Instead _it_ takes Sam’s phone. Dials a number.

“Sam?”

“Dean.”

“But, you- Metatron said-”

“He was wrong, but Crowley, he attacked us. S-Sam’s dead and I’m bleeding out. You gotta help me, Cas.”

“I’m on my way, Dean. Stay with me.”

_It_ hangs up, draws the Blade, slashes across the host’s stomach and sheathes it again. A few sluggish pulses of blood ooze out, nowhere near enough to be convincing. _It_ expected that. That’s why _it_ made such a mess of Sam. _It_ scoops up great handfuls of blood and gore from the floor, smothers the host’s jacket, shirt, face, everywhere. Then _it_ exits the bunker, collapses just outside, forces the host’s eyes to return to normal, and _it_ waits.

*

“Dean.”

“You came, Cas.”

“Dean this isn’t as bad as it looks, I can heal you.”

“Sammy?”

“Dean, I- you know I can’t. I don’t have enough grace to bring back the dead.”

“But-”

“We’ll work something out, we always do. But let’s get you safe for now.”

Castiel cradles Dean’s head in his hands and directs his grace towards the wound. Too late does he realise what he would have seen immediately had he still been at full power. Under Dean’s skin is a pulsing, roiling mess of red that sucks his grace up eagerly. He tries to stop, to break away, but _it_ grabs his arms, holds them still as _it_ leeches every last scrap of rotten grace from Castiel’s vessel. The body’s cells are scoured, drained clean of angelic essence, except for one tiny fragment which, with vindictive fury, _it_ ignites. 

If it had been the last spark of his own grace, Castiel would merely have Fallen. Because it isn’t, and because he is saturated, poisoned, by another’s divinity, he is obliterated. 

The spark blazes, whiplashing through cells already made unstable by the putrid, stolen grace that they’d been struggling to keep caged. There is no path of least resistance in Castiel’s body. Every scrap of him is tainted. The blaze sears the body from inside out, igniting it, and the skeletal remains of Castiel’s wings flare out and burn onto the ground. They make a sorry sight, stunted, featherless, broken and twisted at odd angles.

_It_ drops Castiel’s limp, dead arm, stands, dusts the host’s body off. _It_ mixes that little of the putrefying twice stolen grace with _its_ own demonic power and floods the host body with vitality, shocking it back to life once more. _It_ feels Dean’s soul knit sluggishly back into the flesh, vaguely aware of his surroundings, but beyond caring. 

He knows he should be angry, should be screaming and fighting to wrest back control, to avenge Cas and Sam, but he isn’t. He’s just tired. Just wants it to stop. He doesn’t want to have to do the right thing anymore, slather himself in blood and pain and misery for the sake of everyone else. He’s no Atlas. He can’t do this. Not again.

He doesn’t accept _it_ , but he doesn’t try and fight _it_ either. He lets _it_ make them one.

*

_He_ kicks the body at _his_ feet and it rolls over. A wish _he_ made a long time ago, when _he_ was just him has been answered. _He_ doesn’t feel a damn thing. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title shamelessly stolen from an AFI song.
> 
> This would have been up ages ago but I wanted to torture my best friend and writing guinea pig with it first, and also the formatting was an unholy pain to do so I kept putting it off. To that end I have probably missed some italics out here and there because i'm a terrible proofreader. Sorry.
> 
> Sorry for killing everyone off. (That's a lie, I'm not sorry at all.)


End file.
